


You're My Heart (I Don't Know Myself)

by Lizicia



Series: I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where [4]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AU - Canon Divergence, F/M, She is baaaaack, from after 1x17, just so you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 04:42:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2719115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizicia/pseuds/Lizicia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'The team knows who Skye is but their memory of her is emotional; they don't know how things turned out in the timeline with Skye. But Ward remembers. He knows that he is a monster but everyone else has forgotten.'</p>
            </blockquote>





	You're My Heart (I Don't Know Myself)

**Author's Note:**

> Also posted on Tumblr.

The thing nobody tells you about the rules of over writing time is this: there are no rules. So when time does get over-written, when it bends our understanding, changes the course of events, deleting some and keeping others, there is no method to it. There is no rulebook to consult, no previous experiences to build upon.

Time has its own will.

* * *

 

“ _You remembered.”_

Those were the only words she'd uttered at him as the cloud of energy she'd emerged from entrapped her father – now that he remembers who the mystery man is – and evaporated with him in it.

They shared a single smile but he could've kept looking into her beaming face forever and this is what he accounts for getting knocked out cold by Natasha, his training completely forgotten in the face of the woman who he didn't even know existed a few weeks ago.

When he comes to, his head is killing him and he's in a S.H.I.E.L.D. containment facility, sitting behind a desk and chained to it. So S.H.I.E.L.D. got two for two: defeated the alien(s) and captured their most eminent traitor. They must've uncorked the champagne at some point.

When Natasha is sent to interrogate him, he puts up no fight and tells them everything about Hydra and Whitehall, or at least as much as he knows. He draws maps, pinpoints Hydra hideouts on the map, talks her through protocols and passwords and codes because he is so tired of this. He has no allegiance left to Hydra. And he got Skye back.

He might've known about her for only a few weeks now but it seems impossible that he could ever have had any higher command than _keep Skye safe_. Ward knows that in his previous life – _their_ previous life – there was nothing he wouldn't have done for her and so, he lets all of his burdens fall away. His primary directive has been fulfilled.

When Coulson comes into the room a few days later, he expects more interrogation and threats and stern looks and reminders of just what an awful person he is because the more his memories have resurfaced, the more he understands that he'll never leave.

Instead, he gets something much worse.

“You're free to go.”

He stares at Coulson for a full twenty seconds before the words register and even then they don't quite make sense.

“I'm...what?”

Coulson sighs. “You're free to go. The information you provided Agent Romanoff with checked out and we have no more use for you. As a...courtesy, we will not detain you. Agent Romanoff believes you are no longer a threat to S.H.I.E.L.D. and that you have no further business with Hydra.”

He cocks his head at Coulson because this doesn't make sense, to talk about protocols and information when what he's done is so terrible it couldn't possibly be contained by something so mundane. “But what about Fitzsimmons?”

Coulson gives him an odd look. “What about them?”

And he realizes something he didn't even consider: when the two timelines collided and merged, events didn't change from the way they happened without Skye, back to the way they happened with Skye.

“Tell me, do you remember Skye?”

Coulson shifts a bit in his chair, probably not eager to be on the receiving end of questions. “Yes. I didn't before but now, I do. And her being back is also something we've looked at as an extenuating circumstance in determining your future.”

“But you don't know what happened when she was a part of the team.”

“Of course I do.”

His voice lacks conviction and all the pieces start to form together in a present that seems almost nightmarish. The team knows who Skye is but their memory of her is emotional; they don't know how things turned out in the timeline with Skye.

But he remembers. He knows that Garrett ordered him to drop Fitzsimmons into the ocean, that he needed to decrypt the hard drive, that he had to use Skye's feelings to get her to do that.

He knows that he is a monster but everyone else has forgotten.

“Ward? Do you have something to say?”

Coulson looks at him intently and while his face must be a sight to see, Ward composes himself. “No, sir. Am I free to go right now?”

He nods and Ward stands, wanting to put as much distance between himself and S.H.I.E.L.D., now that he remembers too much, now that his guilt is threatening to consume him. He almost killed his friends – and now he also remembers that in another time, they were closer to him than his family – even if he also remembers that it was the only choice left, other than letting Garrett just shoot them.

He might've brought Skye back but he can't let her anywhere near him.

He is not a good man.

* * *

 

Ward hides out in one of his oldest and less-used safehouses, deep in the forests of Appalachia, with no other human being in sight.

He dreams of his past life – or his current life, it is tricky to understand sometimes – every night, remembering everything he ever did, every choice he ever made in vivid detail.

He remembers how utterly trapped he felt when Hydra came out of hiding. His loyalty was all bound up in Garrett, in the one person that in the darkest days of his life gave him a purpose again, but also the one person that destroyed all the humanity inside of him, that made him into a well-oiled machine. A T-1000, as Skye liked to call him.

More often than not, his thoughts lead back to Skye, her presence interwoven into his progress, her smiles overthrowing his frowns and her energy overflowing the shadows in his past. She was the change in him and he can feel the realization of that changing him right now, molding him back into the person she tried to make him be.

He doesn't know whether to be glad about it or try and forget everything about her. The more he tries, the less successful he is; there is no forgetting her now that he's fully remembered.

One evening there is a knock on his door and every receptor in his body perks up and his mind almost whispers her name because he can sense her presence even without looking.

It is dangerous and tactically unwise to open the door, to let her talk to him.

He does it anyway.

She stands on his porch, looking very much like the Skye he knew but with an air of serenity and he's not used to seeing her quite so relaxed and light.

“Hi.” And she smiles, softly, and any thought he had of telling her that he's busy or that he doesn't want to talk to her, vanishes.

“Hi.”

She walks in without waiting for an invitation and her fingertips caress his jaw in passing, as if this is something they do and it's enough to unsettle whatever balance he had hoped to retain.

Skye comes to a stop in the middle of the living room and surveys the room unabashedly. “It's very you, Grant.”

She never said his name like that, so casually, and so familiarly.

“Can I get you something?”

“You can start by saying why you ran away from S.H.I.E.L.D.”

And there she is, the girl he does know, the running-into-walls brash and loud and brazen hacker who backed down from nothing.

“I didn't run away. I was let go. S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't want to charge me for my crimes.”

She smiles serenely and shakes her head. “No. Why did you run away from me? You're the one that brought me back. No one else could even remember me before you showed up in that field and said my name.”

“I don't know how I did that.”

“Don't you? What is the point of lying, Grant, if we both understand that you are the only one who could love me enough to keep remembering?”

How wrong he was. This girl is not serene and ethereal; this girl is straightforward and cutting and unafraid of anything and this girl is not his Skye, not the one who could simultaneously tell him that he was a good man and then call him a monster because those things existed in the same time.

This girl is all feelings and he feels his stomach drop when a realization hits him.

“Skye...do you remember me?”

She laughs then but her laugh reveals the exact same thing he observed with Coulson: she has no memory of those events, she only has her feelings to go on and _oh_ , if he can't feel the knife twist because those feelings are everything he's ever wanted for himself but can't possibly have now.

“I know that you love me and that I love you and that is all that matters, isn't it?”

He doesn't have any time to react to her confession or recover from it before she crosses the floor in three quick strides and presses her lips to his.

For a moment, he freezes but she gives him no respite and the feel of her soft lips moving against his is too undeniably good. He's dreamt of her kisses – the ones he never got to have – for days, and to feel it for real is breathtaking. He kisses her back with ardor and just lets himself feel, lets himself acknowledge how right all of this seems, how he has missed the taste of her, the smell of her and the wholeness she brings to him. She makes small noises of encouragement and winds her hands around his neck, presses herself closer to him and oh, if this isn't his destruction and salvation all in one.

He could keep this going for days but a voice in the back of his mind reminds him that he has no right to be doing this when everything is still wrong and messed up and when she doesn't even really know him. Just as the thought enters his head, he feels her tense in his arms and break loose abruptly.

“How could you, Ward?”

The broken look in her face stands in heavy contrast to the awe and love of just moments before and he knows that she definitely remembers him now, all of him.

“To betray us like that? To pretend like you actually cared for us when you were always just doing whatever Hydra told you to do?”

“My feelings for you were real, Skye.”

It feels strange, echoes of a conversation they already had a lifetime ago, a timeline ago, but now she has the intimate knowledge of just how truthful that sentiment is because nothing can deny that only he could bring her back and that when she didn't remember anything else, her feelings were the thing that still stood out and brought her to him.

But it doesn't make everything alright.

She runs her fingers through her hair and Ward can almost see her remember everything, can see her feel it and work through it and he knows how painful this must be for her.

“I just...I just have to get out of here.”

She storms out without even looking at him and he doesn't say anything more, doesn't try and convince her to stay because it is better this way. He couldn't have kept lying to her, couldn't have pretended that everything was alright between them.

But for a moment, he desperately wanted to.


End file.
